There’s Plenty Of Crying In TV: The “League Of Their Own” Is Being Turned Into A Series
Because ideas for original television programming are as dead as travel agencies, The Hollywood Reporter has informed us that Amazon Studios is making Penny Marshall’s 1992 “ladies play baseball while the fellas are off to war” flick A League Of Their Own into a tv series. Broad City’s Abbi Jacobsen and Mozart in the Jungle’s Will Graham will be executive-producing it. If they can get this hot piece (who WASN’T Geena Davis in elder person make-up) to reprise her role as “old Geena Davis,” I’m in.
The “half-hour comedy series” will be more of “a modern look at the story” as opposed to “a traditional reboot” according to THR. So it’s a WNBA-type story? No, I guess “modern” means there will be a central mystery that America obsesses over for a month and some Gen X-era actress will experience a career resurgence if this thing takes off? We’re rooting for you, Heather Graham!
“A League of Their Own is a half-hour comedy infusing the warmth, humor, and DNA of the classic film while taking a contemporary spin on the stories of the women surrounding the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The show will begin with the formation of the league in 1943 and follows the Rockford Peaches, season to season as they struggle to keep the team alive through close games, injuries, late night bar crawls, sexual awakenings, not crying and road trips across a rapidly changing United States. The series dives deeper into the issues facing the country while following a ragtag team of women figuring themselves out while fighting to realize their dreams of playing professional baseball.”
“Sexual awakenings” means lesbians! Yay! We don’t have enough World War II lesbians on TV. Speaking of casting, Geena Davis and Lori Petty’s agents are probably irritated this weekend.
Amazon’s modern take will not feature either Davis’ Dottie or her kid sister, Kit (Lori Petty), both of whom served as the central characters of the 1992 movie.
Abbi Jacobsen won’t be appearing in the series either. And I’ll hazard a guess that film-version cast members Tom Hanks, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell won’t be popping up in the dugout either. This show sucks already!
The original film celebrated its 25th-anniversary last year and is so beloved that it’s been immortalized forever in our nation’s capital.
The feature, produced on a budget of $40 million, went on to gross $132 million worldwide. In 2012, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry for its portrayal of women’s choices and solidarity during World War II that was both funny and feminist.
Why doesn’t Hollywood take horrible movies and make them into horrible TV series in sort of an anti-Buffy the Vampire Slayer move? Looking at a list of movies from the same year, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is ripe for a revisiting starring (obviously) Kevin James and neither Betty White or Cloris Leachman because they’re too good for that shit. Do one of those gender-switched character things, make it Stop! Or My Dad Will Shoot and cast Porn Grandpa. I’d watch that.
Pic: Columbia Pictures